In most room humidifiers in many areas, the container for the water and the media unit become encrusted with mineral deposits from the water supply. To applicant's knowledge there have been several prior attempted solutions to eliminate this problem in room humidifiers, one of which is periodic addition of anti-liming tablets, and another is addition of a liquid anti-liming solution which can be poured into the water reservoir but those are not wholly satisfactory because they require the home owner to periodically obtain the material from storage and either place a tablet or manually pour a certain amount of solution from a bottle into the water reservoir. A somewhat better arrangement is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,323,784 to P. A. Fazio, who discloses in a room humidifier, the use of a second reservoir fixed internally of the humidifier and used to continuously meter an additive liquid such as a deodorant or medicated liquid to the water reservoir. For obvious reasons, continuous metering of an anti-mineral material to a console humidifier would be wasteful and unsatisfactory.
The same problem occurs in the water reservoir of central humidifier apparatus and evaporative cooler installations and, again, solutions to the problem include adding anti-mineral tablets either directly to the water reservoir or to a water supply line as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,191,915 to G. Goettl; or dissolving such tablets in an auxiliary unit and metering the concentrated liquid additive to the reservoir as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,094,134 to G. C. Curries and 3,430,823 to V. L. Hunsaker both of whom show progressive automatic introduction of tablets to the dissolving container; or by dissolving dry material in a container through which the water supply passes as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,709,522 to S. C. Osborne, 2,874,032 to R. L. Kuehner, and 3,126,427 to L. N. Broughton; or by automatically periodically introducing liquid anti-mineral chemicals from large storage tanks or carboys as taught by U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,859,766 to H. L. Shuldener and 3,196,892 to R. H. Savage et al. Most of the central units require an automatic water supply and controls and apparatus not found in room humidifiers and, while satisfactory for central units, often require dismantling or adjustments in fixed equipment and are relatively expensive.
The present invention was developed to provide a convenient and easy way to dispense a water treatment liquid such as liquid "LIME OUT" or other desired water treatment liquids to the water reservoir of a room humidifier and to do so in a manner which will be acceptable to and used by the owner of such humidifiers.
As a solution to the problem, this present invention incorporates, in a humidifier assembly, a readily removable and refillable unit with an auxiliary supply of liquid water treatment within its own convenient dispensing container. The unit is incorporated as an auxiliary attachment to a humidifier with its operating portion accessible from the exterior of the top wall of the humidifier housing. The preferred way to accomplish the desired function and convenient utilization is to provide a simple refillable dispensing bottle with a cap carried poppet valve, the unit being inverted and slipped vertically into the humidifier and having provisions enabling an operator, by a simple depression on the accessible end of the inverted bottle, to cause operation of the dispensing valve to dispense a desired portion of the liquid treatment material into the humidifier water container.
This same type of simple hand manipulated dispenser unit while developed specifically for room console type room humidifiers can be readily incorporated in central heating system and other humidifiers.